The Ways to Where You Are
by boschette
Summary: A short, one-part songfic that spans the lifetime of Pacey and Joey and their years together. Warning: Contains a sad (bittersweet) ending... Please read and review!


**A/N: This song has been begging for fan fiction, so I just had to oblige. And I dedicate this to kelcb26, because she writes the most beautiful songfics in the world, and she writes the best Joey/Pacey scenes, and she inspired me to try my hand at a songfic. This is just something that popped into my head one day and I threw together, but I hope you like it. The lyrics don't belong to me; the song is "100 Years" by Five for Fighting. I hope I do it justice; it's a wonderful song with a great meaning. Please read and review! **

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_I'm 15 for a moment  
Caught in between 10 and 20  
And I'm just dreaming  
Counting the ways to where you are _

**Joey: **I finally understood what it meant to be young and in love. A lot of good it did me, realizing it at this age, but it suddenly made sense. It clicked in a way it never had before. It was about holding hands as if you never wanted to let go (and really, did you?), heartbreakingly simple gestures with unexpectedly complicated intentions, walks on the beach with a zillion stars overhead, dreaming, planning, hoping.

Above all, it was about not knowing too much too far in advance. Because if you knew from the beginning that things change, that they morph overnight into unrecognizable shells of what you thought you understood, you might not want to take the next step. You might never let go of his hand and open the door that you have to open, by rights, to see what your future holds. I knew all this in a moment's time, and I chose to hold on to the fabrication for a little longer. Thank God that's what I chose to do.

_I'm 22 for a moment  
She feels better than ever  
And we're on fire  
Making our way back from Mars _

**Pacey:** Holding a dream in your arms is every bit as wonderful as it's cracked up to be. This I realized as we lay in my unmade bed on rumpled sheets, all of my senses drinking her in, memorizing her: her scent, her shape, the softness of her sleep sounds. And I realized something else, too. In a heartbeat I knew that this wasn't the last time I would hold her, but that it also wasn't the final reconnection our hearts were slated to make. Oh no, I was going to lose her again, I knew that as surely as her silky hair was fanned out over my arm, and knowing it just about broke me. Losing her was the hardest thing I ever had to do, so why did I keep doing it?

Her eyes fluttered but she stayed lost in her own dream world as I lay wide awake in mine. God, how I loved her. Could I let her go again, even if it meant that next time she found her way back to me it would be for keeps? Kissing the bare skin of her shoulder, I knew. Of course I could. I would. No matter how much it hurt.

Thank God I made that choice. Things you love do eventually come back to you, but in their own time. And only if they were really yours to start with. She always belonged to me.

_15 there's still time for you  
Time to buy and time to lose  
15, there's never a wish better than this  
When you only got 100 years to live._

**Joey: **What would I tell that scared little girl who lived down the creek from her soulmate but found her heartmate in someone else? That it was okay to love both of them, maybe, that it was the only way to realize what she really wanted out of life. That loving him didn't mean losing herself to him. But then, that wouldn't be right. That would be against the rules. You can't go back and freely offer the hard-earned advice you gathered in the years between. Otherwise, there would be nothing left for the child you used to be to learn. I wish she had known, though, that it would be all right. I wish she had known that much.

**Pacey:** It's funny. I was so scared of loving her. In some ways I was as scared of that as she was of the same thing. Because I knew her. I knew her tendency to run, and I knew that fact would spend a great deal of time eating away at everything that made me hers. When you're fifteen those things really matter. When you're fifteen the greatest success you can wrap your mind around is the avoidance of being hurt. What you don't know when you're fifteen is that sometimes you have to be crushed to make things come out right in the end. And sometimes the most worthwhile successes are the ones that hurt the most.

_I'm 33 for a moment  
Still the man, but you see I'm a they  
A kid on the way  
A family on my mind _

**Pacey: **My father was a good man. It took me years to understand as much. He was a good man but a crappy father. He loved me, but damned if I knew that, or suspected, until long after he was gone from my life. It won't be that way with my child. My child will live his or her life knowing that he or she is my most prized possession, that he or she makes my life complete. That he or she is the living, breathing proof that my dream finally (finally!) became reality, and the most beautiful woman in the world, the woman whom I love so much that my heart sometimes aches when I look at her, is finally mine in all the ways that count.

_I'm 45 for a moment  
The sea is high  
And I'm heading into a crisis  
Chasing the years of my life _

**Joey: **Time is going so fast now. I can remember the details of my conflicted adolescence as if it unfolded just yesterday, but at the same time it seems like a century ago. My own child is closer to those wild, unabashed turmoils than I am now, and I wish for him strength that I didn't have until much later. He'll have it, no doubt. He's too much like his father not to.

His father ... I look in his eyes and see the best part of myself. I see the boy I fell in love with and the man who has made my life a joy. I see the future, too. I see us growing old and holding hands across the space between our rocking chairs. I see us laughing at the same old jokes and reminiscing over our shared past until time washes away those memories. And then we'll fade away together. Always together. I never knew that I could love so completely.

_15 there's still time for you  
Time to buy, Time to lose yourself  
Within a morning star  
15 I'm all right with you  
15, there's never a wish better than this  
When you only got 100 years to live _

**Pacey: **I see our child growing up before my eyes and becoming just like his old man. It makes me proud. It makes me worry, because I know what's in store for him and I can't shield him from it all. Heartache is one trauma every person has to experience solo. My greatest wish for him is a love like the one I share with his mother. Everyone should be so lucky. Everyone should be so blessed.

_Half time goes by  
Suddenly you're wise  
Another blink of an eye  
67 is gone  
The sun is getting high  
We're moving on... _

**Pacey:** The hardest part of being sick is looking into her eyes and seeing the loneliness that has already started creeping in. It makes me angry, at myself for having to leave her, at the cancer that is forcing me to, and at God for letting this happen to us when no obstacles he's tossed our way before have ever succeeded in keeping us apart. I think this time we might be out of options. I try to keep those feelings from her, but I think she knows. She knows me too well for her own good sometimes.

Was it worth it? I think that's a question everyone probably asks themselves when they're standing on the edge of eternity like I am now. Was it worth all the pain, the frustration, the disappointment, and the tragedy? Was this life worth all the trouble it caused?

My answer comes immediately, and in the simplest terms. Hell yeah, it was worth it. Every second I spent in her glorious company was worth it and then some. Who knew an incurable screw-up like me would get so lucky with the things that matter in life? That helps, too. Knowing that helps the anger, and when I smile at her now her return smiles are genuine. She's no longer just putting on a show of strength for the dying man's bedside. Thank God for that.

I tell her I'll send word back from her parents and Jen and all the others who have stepped out before us. She smiles at that. I want to leave her smiling. I want her radiant smile to be the last thing I see before I close my eyes for the last time.

_I'm 99 for a moment  
Dying for just another moment  
And I'm just dreaming  
Counting the ways to where you are _

**Joey:** I pegged it right, all those years ago, when I said we would grow old still holding on to our past. We did. It was as beautiful as I'd ever imagined.

When he left me I thought I must surely go at the same moment. After so many years, the heart shouldn't even remember how to function without the echo of its partner.

My son and I were cleaning out his things and I came upon a journal that he had kept. My husband ... a journal? So he did have secrets after all. That made me smile in spite of the gnawing emptiness in my heart that comes from missing him already. He never failed to surprise me in some way, every day that I knew him. This was just his final surprise.

Reading the carefully etched words scrawled in his almost-illegible handwriting, I realized that what he had written, his thoughts and emotions, reflected my own—unerringly. The first entry was dated from our wedding day. "Today I married Josephine Lillian Potter," it began. "And I'm going to go on the record with this: If nothing else remotely positive ever happens to me again, I could now die a happy man." Smiling, I flipped forward to the last entry, dated just two days ago. I read the last lines: "Maybe when Joey gets to heaven, the Big Guy will let us set sail on the True Love again. This time we won't have to come back, if we don't want to. How would that be for an amazing afterlife?"

Our son put his arms around me, mistaking my tears for sadness. I looked up into his eyes, every bit his father's eyes, and smiled at him to set his mind at ease. "I'm all right, honey," I told him. And I was. I was.

_15 there's still time for you  
22 I feel her too  
33 you're on your way  
Every day's a new day...  
15 there's still time for you  
Time to buy and time to choose  
Hey 15, there's never a wish better than this  
When you only got 100 years to live_

The day Joey Witter left this earth to join her true love, the sun was shining and the wind was just right: It was perfect sailing weather.

She had a smile on her face when she went.


End file.
